Spider-Man Spinoff ‘Kraven the Hunter’ Lands ‘Equalizer’ Writer

Although Silver & Black is on hold (for now), Sony has plenty of other plans for the world of Spider-Man, including this fall’s Venom (starring Tom Hardy and his voice) and Morbius(starring Jared Leto as a super-powered vampire), as well as the animated Into the Spider-Verse. Clearly, the studio is keeping their live-action offerings centered on villains and anti-heroes, and they’ve hired a screenwriter to tackle the next addition: Kraven the Hunter.

Collider reports that Sony has tapped Richard Wenk, writer of The Equalizer 2, to script the Kraven the Hunter movie based on the villain from the Spider-Man comics. Kraven, aka Sergei Kravinoff, is a maniacal big game hunter who views Spidey as the ultimate trophy kill. He’s also the half-brother of fellow supervillain Chameleon.

Sony’s plans for a potential Kraven the Hunter movie were first mentioned last summer, along with a possible film about Mysterio. Since then, the studio has enlisted Gina Prince-Blythewood for heist team-up Silver & Black (which follows Silver Sable and Black Cat) and Life director Daniel Espinosa for Morbius. Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer helmed the upcoming Venom movie, starring Tom Hardy and Riz Ahmed, which hits theaters in October. Sony will likely use the success (or lack thereof) of that film to determine whether or not they should move forward with movies like Kraven and Morbius.

As noted by Collider, Wenk, whose credits also include The Magnificent Seven and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, has a pretty challenging task ahead: Like Sony’s other Spidey spinoffs, Kraven will not feature Tom Holland’s Peter Parker / Spider-Man, though it will take place in the same universe. Due to Sony’s current deal with Marvel, which includes three Spider-Man movies, the character is only permitted to appear in projects overseen by Marvel Studios.

Of course, Holland’s Spider-Man (or a new iteration) could factor into the franchise expansion somewhere down the line. If Sony builds a successful foundation with these spinoffs by the time their deal with Marvel is up, they could retake control of Spider-Man and pit him against their newly-established stable of villains. It is a potentially clever approach, and one that sort of takes the Marvel Studios blueprint and flips the script: Introduce individual villains in solo movies, humanize them as anti-heroes and make them likable, and then maybe you team them up against Spider-Man — who is essentially the villain to all these bad guys.

But again, it seems that this plan could very well live or die with Venom. And we’ll have to wait until October to see how that one pans out.